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Supreme Court To Weigh Religious Freedom In Colorado Preschool Funding Case
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CNN, Approved, State

Supreme Court To Weigh Religious Freedom In Colorado Preschool Funding Case

By John Fritze | CNN The Supreme Court agreed Monday to review a Colorado law that requires preschools receiving taxpayer money to enroll children of same-sex couples — setting up an important First Amendment showdown at the high court that pits religious rights against LGBTQ families. At the same time, the court declined to hear another high-profile case involving a Massachusetts couple who said their school began treating their middle school child as genderqueer against their wishes. After years of allowing religious schools in some settings to receive state funding alongside secular schools, the 6-3 conservative court will now decide what to do when school leaders assert that anti-discrimination laws intended to protect gay and transgender people conflict with their...
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What records show about Poudre School District’s role in student ICE walkouts
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

What records show about Poudre School District’s role in student ICE walkouts

By RMV Staff Nearly half of Lesher Middle School’s 766 students walked out of class on Feb. 2 to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement, part of a wave of student demonstrations that Poudre School District says it neither encouraged nor discouraged. PSD is among the 10 largest school systems in Colorado. Emails and internal records reviewed by RMV suggest the situation may not have been as hands-off as described. What happened during the walkouts Over the following week, other district schools followed Lesher Middle School’s (LMS) lead, as nearly 900 6th–8th graders from over half of the district’s neighborhood middle schools and approximately 1,000 high school students walked out of class to protest ICE.  Students left school property, marched along Fort Colli...
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Supreme Court Takes Up Colorado Preschool Case Testing Religious Freedom
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The Denver Gazette, Approved, State

Supreme Court Takes Up Colorado Preschool Case Testing Religious Freedom

By Lindsay Whitehurst | The Denver Gazette WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court will hear from Catholic preschools that say Colorado violated their religious rights by excluding them from a state-funded “universal” pre-kindergarten program over their admission policies. The court agreed on Monday to take up the appeal from St. Mary Catholic Parish in its challenge against a state program. That challenge is supported by the Trump administration. Joined by the Archdiocese of Denver, two Catholic institutions, St. Mary Catholic Parish in Littleton and St. Bernadette Catholic Parish in Lakewood, filed a lawsuit against the state of Colorado, alleging their preschools cannot participate in the publicly funded program because the church’s religious views on sexual o...
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It’s your child: Why parents must take the lead in education
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, State

It’s your child: Why parents must take the lead in education

Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project I really liked the video linked at bottom. I think at some point the Independence Institute started a new video series about education, and this is one of their episodes. The thing that made this one catch my eye was the topic. It’s something near and dear to my heart: not just an encouragement to get involved in your child’s education, it’s also a guide. To give you a quick sense of the topics in this discussion, I took a picture of the timestamps from the video description and attached as screenshot 1. I’ll leave it to you to watch the video, but I would be remiss if I didn’t mention a couple last thing. One of the most important things you can (and should if you’re not) be doing to make sure...
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Jeffco Schools Challenge Federal Title IX Findings Amid Data Dispute
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CBS Colorado, Approved, Local

Jeffco Schools Challenge Federal Title IX Findings Amid Data Dispute

By Anna Alejo | CBS Colorado Jeffco Public Schools is disputing a U.S. Department of Education conclusion that the school district is violating Title IX, asking federal officials for a meeting and more details on their findings as a 30-day deadline for response arrived on Monday. The department's Office for Civil Rights determined that 61 male students were competing on girls' sports teams in the district — a finding Jeffco says contradicts data it originally submitted to investigators after the OCR began its investigation of Jeffco in June 2025. "During this review, we requested clarification on several findings that appear to contradict the data we originally provided — discrepancies that directly impact two of the OCR's three proposed actions," the district said in ...
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Cutting Social Studies Tests Means Less Accountability For Schools
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Complete Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Cutting Social Studies Tests Means Less Accountability For Schools

By Ari Armstrong | Commentary, Complete Colorado If “public education is the bedrock of Colorado’s democracy,” as Democratic sponsors declare in the TABOR-busting Senate Bill 26-135, then why do lawmakers want to cut social-studies testing from two grades to one? Someone might conclude that not even the legislators believe the slop they’re slinging on behalf of the teachers’ unions. A look at social-studies testing Given how abysmally most Colorado students perform on the social studies portion of the Colorado Measures of Academic Success, maybe it’s no wonder that some legislators want to sweep the evidence of underperforming public schools under the rug. If you look at CMAS results by year, you’ll find that the last publicly-released data f...
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Should professors persuade or present? Classroom neutrality questioned in Colorado
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Colorado Accountability Project, Approved, Commentary, Local

Should professors persuade or present? Classroom neutrality questioned in Colorado

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project The article at bottom details how an adjunct professor specializing in queer studies at Colorado Mesa University resigned over a dispute involving classroom neutrality. I’ll leave it to you to read up on the dispute and come to your own decisions about the facts in the matter. From my take on the article, it seems that there might be something of a disagreement as to exactly what was said and what happened. I am also open to any civil comment you’d like to add. Please feel free to toss in your two cents on the issue, whether we agree or not. Again, without saying what the professor here did or didn’t do, let’s examine two different versions of how a class discussion could go. Contrast the following: ...
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Colorado bills spark concern over parental rights and religious freedom
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Christian Home Educators of Colorado, Approved, Commentary, State

Colorado bills spark concern over parental rights and religious freedom

By Colleen Enos | Commentary, Christian Home Educators of Colorado Colorado is becoming much more antagonistic towards families and people of faith. Our leadership appears to place more importance on ideology, secrecy, and crime when introducing and debating bills. The last few weeks have been an example of that mindset. The legislative session crossed the halfway mark in mid-March and is racing towards the finish line of May 13. SB26-018, Legal Protections for the Dignity of Minors, passed out of committee on March 25 and is headed for second and third reading in the State House this week. The most problematic section of the bill was stripped out in the Senate, but the secrecy provision for minors who request a name change for reasons including conforming to their new ...
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How a Garfield County dispute turned into a court-ordered separation
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Rocky Mountain Voice, Local, Top Stories

How a Garfield County dispute turned into a court-ordered separation

By Jen Schumann | Rocky Mountain Voice Heather Fitzke’s story offers a look at how quickly a family dispute can move from home into the courtroom—and how outside involvement, public statements and court filings can reshape parental authority in ways many families may not expect. That side of the case is laid out in Part 2. Heather Fitzke says what happened to her family didn’t start in a courtroom. But that’s where it changed everything. She expected to defend herself, and she also ended up arguing with a judge about pronouns.  That moment came during a seven-hour hearing on Sept. 10 that would change the course of her family. Fitzke said that hearing came after she had already lost custody of her child through a separate guardianship decision. On Sept. 10, the judge ru...
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